Ira Glass

I previously wrote a post on how I had a brain crush on Ira Glass, host of NPR's This American Life. I love him, he's awesome, whatever.

He came to Mizzou during my last year, and I was really sad that I missed him. He's coming to the Pageant in St. Louis. I have no idea what his live show will be like, but I bought a ticket for myself anyways. I'm talking to every Ira lover I know and trying to get them to go with me.

His show (I think) is benefiting Prison Performing Arts, which is a program in some eastern Missouri prisons where the prisoners put on plays. You'd be better off just listening to the This American Life program on it:

'Act V'

Try Me Bicycle

Try Me Bicycle MySpace

NPR Music article on Try Me Bicycle

thanks, marion.

Yeah Nader

kcbs.com

Although I will probably not vote for the guy, you gotta respect him for all that he has done and for sticking it to the man this long. Way to go, Nader. And he's running for the Green party again. There a good NPR article on Nader's campaign for president in 2008 and how it wasn't his fault that Bush won in 2004.

Wikipedia article on Ralph Nader (here).

Nerd/Old Man Crush: Ira Glass

Ira Glass, host of NPR's 'This American Life' is one of the best story-tellers I've ever heard. He has a co-experiential compassion with the people he interviews. It's wonderful. I would just listen and have him tell stories to me all the time. Listen to some of his stuff (here).

Current TV

My brother, who teaches Media Literacy at a high school in Chicago, always has his finger on the pulse of the new media technology scene. Yesterday he showed me and my Dad Current TV, which is kind of like a TV on the internet made up of better-produced YouTube-style programs. Looking at it briefly, it looks like the future of TV news. Each story is presented on the front page and you click on it and watch a 3-18 minute video on it.

The reason Steve's interested in it is so that he can give his students the assignment to make a news story for themselves and submit it to Current. It's awesome. They post a bunch of topics that they want covered (see them here) and you can choose which one you want to shoot and submit it. They also pay you. I think this is perfect for my friend Dan, who's in film school in LA, but he always views my ideas with skepticism.

This type of news journalism is the new frontier, I think. Some Journalism Grad Students gave a presentation on this in my Social Change and Trends class. They talked about a thing Minnesota Public Radio (NPR) is doing called Public Insight Journalism. Instead of interviewing "experts in their field" for articles, Minnesota Public Radio interviews actual normal people who deal with the issues on a daily basis. It's all very postmodern.

Oh, and did I mention that Current TV is the brainchild of Al Gore and Google? Figures. Here's the wikipedia article on it.

TURKMENISTAN ON NPR

My coworker said she was listening to NPRs Morning Edition talking about Turkmenistan, so I looked it up. This guy is ridiculous. He invented his own religious text, the Rhunama, which you can buy on Amazon.com, which makes up one third of required education in Turkmenistan.

TURKMENISTAN

"In Turkmenistan, nearly six million people are still caught in the iron grip of an eccentric dictator who is no longer even alive. His name is Saparmurat Niyazov, but he called himself Turkmenbashi, or father of the Turkmen. Niyazov died last December and was succeeded by his personal dentist, but like so many things in secretive Turkmenistan, little is known about how that happened.

The Central Asian state has long been one of the most isolated countries in the world. This vast, gas-rich former Soviet republic is probably best known for a Stalinist cult of personality created by Niyazov, its first president. Stunts such as holding a press conference to denounce the phenomenon of lip-synching and re-naming the month of January after himself only added to his stature as something of an international joke." (npr.com) read more